At present, the number of various applications (software) used on computing devices, including personal electronic computing machines (computers), is constantly increasing. Among the multitude of applications, there are many malicious programs which are able to cause harm to a computer or the user of a computer (particularly the data of the user), such as Internet worms, keyboard trackers, computer viruses, as well as applications which can take screenshots for the purpose of stealing confidential information being displayed on the user's computing device.
The protection of the confidential data of a user of computing devices against such programs is an urgent problem. Such data may be displayed to the user using windows of various applications, such as browsers. Malicious applications can obtain access to the information being displayed on the screen of the computing device and take screenshots (snapshots of the screen) or obtain access to the bit representation of the image on the screen of the computing device (the data characterizing the image, by accessing the system functions of the operating system or the corresponding drivers forming the image, consisting of application windows and being displayed on the screen of the computing device).
Methods exist, often realized in antivirus applications, whereby the antivirus application intercepts the access of processes to the data characterizing the image on the screen of the computing device. If, among the windows of the applications running, there are those which belong to protected applications (e.g., applications running in the “sandbox”), access to the data characterizing the image on the screen of the computing device may be blocked.
The known methods do not solve the problem of blocking access to information being displayed to the user. The present disclosure may enable a more effective solution of the problem of blocking access to information.